She had set out three leathery zucchinis, tough parcels of crocodile green that would soon be rendered into something or other and sealed in jars they would be eating from throughout the stretch of winter months. Treading closer, Winston noticed that next to them sat the day’s culls: runty beets, fibrous end of season yellow beans, scabby and scarred tomatoes. They could be pickled or stewed, he knew from experience. Alberta was a firm proponent of “waste not, want not” well after the Depression’s scarcity years. She might have faith in progress, but she’d seen enough to suspect that a giant step backward was not an unreasonable expectation.
“Well, if there was a God, October would prove it. Hello, Mother. Another glorious day. How’s life in the patch?” Winston lowered the register of his voice when he spoke to her from the distance. Alberta’s hearing was not what it had been, she reminded him now and again. She’d accepted it as another sign of creeping senility—inevitable, unavoidable, a fact of nature—and couldn’t be bothered to go to the ear man Doc Carter had recommended. Why bother?
This young fellow over in Clear Brook could fit her with a space-age hearing aid, Doc Carter let her know whenever they ran into one another, foxy and persistent in the face of her baffling indifference. Unless, of course, her ears were just stopped up with wax: last week he’d offered to take a look-see right there on the sidewalk as people filed by them on 1st Avenue. “It’s not, er, unheard of,” he had said, apologetic about the stillborn pun, before he proceeded with an anecdote, one of scores Alberta suspected he always kept nearby and handy as cod liver oil. She’d told Winston that the doctor’s philosophy of medical advice appeared to be “Why not store up examples of mishaps like preserves in a larder?” After he’d spun out the harrowing tale, Alberta had politely refused his offer of an expert examination. Secure at home, she’d related the embarrassing episode to Winston as well as the lesson-filled story the doctor had leveled at her.
Doc Carter was a man fond of stern finger-wagging and precautionary tales about the dear prices thoughtless patients paid for not taking care of the basics. The underlying premise was that things are worse than they appear; thus, in his blood-soaked stories, a stubbed toe became an open invitation to gangrene and a scratched mosquito’s bite metamorphosed into the royal road to blood poisoning. Carnage around every corner. “An ounce of prevention…,” he’d announce with little provocation.
Winston and Alberta had spoken about the Doc’s blood-spilling vignettes of fatal carelessness and decided he made them up to order; they were too plentiful and they always seemed perfectly cut to fit the particular circumstance. Could there truly have been such witless men—mesmerized by overheated engines, whirring fans, and shake-dulled axes—and so large a collection of missing fingers, toes, and ears? Still, the whiff of Old Testament reprimand from the mount did make the stories a thrill. Winston saw that Doc Carter would make a terrific instructor for the Family Life Education unit. Affable, yet impartial and stern.
It was no accident that, years ago, Doc Carter had been put in charge of delivering the personal hygiene lecture to the enlisted men of the district—young and old alike—before their train trip to the recruitment centre in the city. Depending on where the greenhorn soldiers were destined, he would open with, “Men, there’s more to France than can-can girls,” or else, “Men, there’s more to England than trifle.” Though he’d also reserved, “Men, there’s more to Japan than geisha girls,” he’d never had the chance to use it. Polishing his gold-rimmed spectacles with a pressed white hankie, he’d spoken calmly and about practical considerations right after he had shown the short Educational Program made by the Government of Canada, its single reel shared, worn down, and splintered by the municipalities of the Valley. He was proud of his contribution to the war effort and, Winston had heard often enough, he found clever ways to pull it into unrelated conversations.
When that fragile celluloid strip didn’t fracture and demand one stop-gap repair after another, the federal government’s lesson was fourteen minutes of shock tactics that nevertheless incited hoots of merriment and skittish laughter each time Doc Carter clicked on the projector. In it, an elderly scientist with heavy black glasses and a head of wiry grey hair wrote Latin words and their more commonly known synonyms—Clap, Morning Drop, Dose—on a portable blackboard and occasionally tugged on his laboratory coat. His lecture faded and was replaced by the view of a camera seemingly set up in the middle of a military doctor’s office. It lingered on the legion of moist and gruesome medical conditions enlisted men had dropped their trousers to reveal. The pièce de résistance was a series of brief scenes that depicted conniving women—French, unexpectedly, to judge by their unvarying berets and glasses of red wine—loitering in cafés and taverns. Their glistening painted lips, smoldering eyes, and snug wool skirts could evidently siphon key war strategies from unsuspecting men in mere seconds. After the fifth man had shouted out, “I’d like her to try to outfox me,” Doc had vowed to write a letter to the Ministry of Defense with his ideas for improving the film. He thought they should leave pale with fear and not flushed from bonhomie and guffaws.
Feeling reminiscent years later, he had joked to Winston that if he could not prevent men from tasting forbidden fruit, he could make damn sure they understood the importance of taking precautions. He’d never reported his success rate.
Alberta had relayed the pertinent bits of the doctor’s tale to Winston and thrown in some commentary of her own. Apparently, this teenaged boy (the scion—unnamed, thank you very much—of a local lumber baron, no less) had made a half-hearted effort to hang himself in the garage. His mother had discovered him before he completed the deed. After bursting into tears and then giving him a scalding, blurred-vision talking to, she had driven her sullen, shame-faced child directly to Doc Carter’s office for treatment of the rope burns. She knew full well that Doc, famed for his fire and brimstone medical enthusiasm, would worm his way into the heart of the problem (not that it would take an Ellery Queen to make sense of those angry scarlet welts) and give the young man a stern finger-shaking-mouth-tsk-tsking-head-shaking lecture about responsibility and the unquestionable value of life.
The doctor had in fact discovered a secret the mother’s pleading could not: the entire problem stemmed from two plugs of wax, each one no larger than a click beetle. The boy’s personal hygiene could not be called fastidious, it would seem, and his ears had become so blocked with the amber paste that his hearing began to suffer. He thought it was the end of the world. “The very idea,” Alberta had interjected. “It’s ludicrous.” Impetuous and self-important (he was a rebellious and pig-headed sixteen-year-old and the eldest son of local wealth, and he had taken the town aristocrat role to heart), this scamp had decided that death would be preferable to the ignobility of being deaf. “Imagine dying for something so inconsequential, so simple to remedy,” the doctor had said pointedly to Alberta, making the parable’s message so plain that even a half-wit would understand.
With imploring eyebrows raised high, Winston had agreed that the doctor was well intended and his concern worth at least taking into consideration.
Alberta had replied impatiently, “Yes, you’re right, he was, but I’d know it if ear wax was really my problem.”
This late afternoon, Alberta wore her broad-rimmed straw hat and the one-of-a-kind calico gardening apron she’d sewn that had as many pockets and flaps as a fisherman’s vest. Surrounded by a dense thicket of staked tomato plants, she gave him a harried clerk’s Sir-I’ll-be-with-you-in-a-moment wave. Winston admitted that his interest in gardening was dilettantish compared with his mother’s. It was a happy arrangement. He was content to dabble in his quadrant and produce a handful of perfect striking blooms every season. Besides, he didn’t have the spare hours for upkeep; a garden so expansive would be as demanding as raising a child, he imagined. Alberta had told him countless times over the years that the secret of her gardening success was “getting right in there.”
She had no adv
ice—not to mention respect—for Sunday toilers who expected instantaneous results from their gardens and who refused to make social sacrifices for maintenance. Usually young wives and busy middle-aged luncheon-and-committee ladies would drop by with a question or two, all the while gazing wistfully at Alberta’s plot and wondering aloud about where they might have gone wrong. “You need to get your hands dirty. It’s elementary, my dear Watson,” she’d throw in with a loopy English accent after telling them they must dedicate an hour of each day to their plots of vegetables or flowers in order to get to know them. In any case, Winston thought no good would result from possessing his mother’s degree of enthusiasm. It would have led to a showdown, the This town ain’t big enough for the both of us confrontation of a John Ford Western.
One time she explained to him, “Gardening’s a two-way street, like a marriage, I suppose. You give and then you get.”
“Marriage was not exactly your forte, Mother,” he teased.
“You’re right there, sonny boy,” she said, no hint of levity in her reply.
After she had reached her target in the tangle of tomato plants, Alberta turned to face Winston and replied to his salutation.
“Sorry, I saw another one of the little buggers hiding in there,” she said as she gazed briefly into the sky. “It is terrific, yes. I was feeling the exact same thing just a couple of minutes ago. You want to breathe in the air till your lungs burst. Though right now all I’ve got is that sour tang of tomato vine up my nose.”
“Funny, I was walking up Grant Street and had this idea of walking without stopping, just walk and walk, taking in the air and admiring the slant of light. It suddenly seemed like there was no practical reason to be indoors and following my routine.” Winston squatted for a moment. Then, uncomfortable with his trousers bunched and his shirt pulled taut, he sat on the damp earth. He untied his shoes and removed them along with his mismatched socks. The soil on the pathway was cool but dry and packed hard as pavement.
Alberta spoke as Winston made himself comfortable. “I suppose it’s some animal drive. We sense that soon enough we’re all about to hibernate, tucked inside our dim little caves during the winter months and waiting until it’s safe or warm enough to go outside again.” She picked a tomato and tucked it into a pocket. “It’s like we want to capitalize on our outdoor time, store up our acorns, I suppose. Maybe our brains can remember the light and recollect it during the February blues. Or greys.” She bent over again and darted her hand into the dense Amazonian growth, sly as a weasel.
“Gotcha, you little dickens,” she said. “But for a change you’re wanting to be the grasshopper more than the ant. Maybe we can take a walk along the Flats on Sunday; I expect the skies will be clear. After church, though, of course.” She winked.
He smiled.
“Say, Frank Polovski dropped off an envelope for you today. From the city. I left it in the kitchen.”
“From the city? Perhaps it’s news from the specialist,” Winston said.
“No, it was a Mr. Williamson.”
“I can’t guess who that could be.”
“Well then, you got a letter from someone you haven’t met,” she said. “Though it’s a miracle it ever arrived here.”
“I’ll be back in a second,” he said. He brought his shoes and socks with him to the back door.
Winston returned with an unstamped envelope addressing
Mr. Winston Wilson
River Bend City, British Columbia
It had a Vancouver return address:
Mr. Richard Williamson
401 - 1585 Georgia Street
Vancouver, British Columbia
“Oh. Dickie. Mother, it’s something from that eccentric fellow I told you about months ago. The one I ran into again at the Hudson’s Bay on that day we spent in the city.” He stood now and spoke from the edge of the path. Alberta had remained still in order to hunt in her tomato plants.
“What’s it about?”
The card in the envelope was a party invitation.
A newspaper headline had been snipped in half and scotch-taped to the front of the plain white card:
Starlet Fails to
Save Errol Flynn
The newspaper’s headline practically shouted its strange accusation. Who would expect a blonde teenaged girl—a Hollywood movie starlet, not a student nurse, nor even a candy striper—to revive a hefty middle-aged man with malaria and a pickled liver who had just suffered a heart attack? Winston thought it was doubtful that a doctor could do so. Flynn’s unheroic death at a fancy hotel in the city had made news just weeks before; it had also incited wages of sin tongue-clucking in the staff room.
Another clipping had been stuffed inside. Winston unfolded it and examined the grainy newsprint photograph. The EXCLUSIVE PICTURE featured Errol Flynn seated—according to the caption—next to “protégé Beverley Aadland, 17.” The photograph had been “taken shortly before the film star’s death.” It was evidently a snapshot, and not a remotely flattering one. He was paunchy, wan, and grizzled, his hair uncombed and face unshaven; it was as though he had not been a swashbuckling, larger-than-life movie actor, but a belligerent professional wrestler who had been on a bender for a few days: tip-toe around him or else pay the price. His wiry protégé might be his shining innocent daughter, blithely enjoying a poolside afternoon at the neighbour’s, a barbeque smoking just outside the picture’s frame. She wasn’t, of course; thanks to tabloids, everyone had read about Errol Flynn’s proclivity for starlets and wild Babylonian parties. He was legendary, thought Winston. He reconsidered. Out of respect for Hadrian and Theseus, he decided that infamous was better, an accurate evaluation. Being a lecherous lush was hardly a ticket to the heights of Mount Olympus.
Another clipped-out headline—Flynn ‘Old, Sick Before His Time’—was stapled atop the photograph of the sorry spectacle. Winston smiled at Dickie’s handiwork. He thought for a moment that the newspaper’s exposure of the actor’s ignoble final moments was cruel and gloating. An instant later he recanted, imagining that live by the sword, die by the sword was perhaps apropos. Errol Flynn was obviously still proud if he allowed for even one photograph of himself with his ample belly spilling over the waistband of his tight-as-sausage skin swimming trunks, full highball glass resting on the ledge of his sea lion’s midriff. And besides, Winston thought, all of his fans would remember the countless heroes their hero had played during his prime.
Winston felt sure that if he happened to be wandering around shirtless—perish the thought—he would encourage no one to aim a camera in his direction. And he’d kept his shape far better than the star. Modesty should not be a trait that only women possess, he believed.
Winston walked along one of the packed mud trails of the vegetable patch to hand the clipping to Alberta, still busy ferreting out fat green worms hidden but dangerous in the cluster of tomato plants. With a huff, she exclaimed, “Little beggars, this’ll teach you a lesson.” She straightened up and dropped her tightly curled captives onto the dirt, tamping the worms back into the earth with the gardening pole. Grendel darted out—tail twisted into a panicked question mark—spooked by the sudden pounding. He paused at the garden’s edge and flopped over.
“Okay, that’s that—for today at least,” Alberta said. She slipped off her gloves and stuffed them into her vest.
“What’s this?” she asked as she accepted the envelope from Winston. “Hell, he really went to pot, didn’t he? I remember him in Captain Blood. So handsome. I knew a couple gals who saw that picture a dozen times over. Joined fan clubs. Odd thing to do when money’s so tight. Yes, sir, they’d just swoon whenever he’d pick up a sword. What’s this all about, though? Was this Dickie fellow a big fan too?”
“No, Mother, I don’t think so.” Winston had already looked at the card’s remaining content, and was impressed to discovery that calligraphy was one of Dickie’s talents. The upper half of the card was filled with two large words—
Errol Flung!
/>
The lower half offered an explanation—
His ‘Wicked, Wicked Ways’
A Masquerade
To Commemorate* the Sad Passing of a
Hallowed Matinee Idol
October 31, 1959, Banff House
Arrive in Character
* A bottle of his favourite (vodka) will get you past the door
He handed the card to Alberta.
“‘Arrive in character’, hey?” she said. “Sounds like your kind of event. You’ve always been so keen on Halloween.” Alberta’s sarcasm was shot through with affection.
“I know. A masquerade is bad enough.”
“Do you think you’ll go? There’s very little time. It seems awfully extravagant to head all the way to the city for a party. And such a morbid one. No doubt there’ll be one at the school?”
“There is, that’s true. It’s not the same, though.” Winston hoped Alberta would not press him to explain. He felt a child’s urge to stamp his feet. “Extravagance is in order sometimes, don’t you think? I’m going to think about it, in any case. And I’d be broadening my social circle as one ought, right?”
The Age of Cities Page 11